How Big do Pterosaurs Get?
What’s been going around lately is the subject of just how big modern pterosaurs get. What some people misunderstand is that sightings of modern pterosaurs do not necessarily need to closely coorelate, in size estimates, with sizes known from examining fossils. If we look to the fossils alone for understanding, we would think that any modern pterosaur that had a wingspan over twenty-five feet must be the short-tailed variety, what some cryptozoologists call “Pterodactyloid.” But that is not the case when we look to the details in the eyewitness descriptions, for most of them include a long tail, like what some cryptozoologists call “Rhamphorhynchoid.”
But now to specifics, how big do pterosaurs get?
The Lake Pung Sighting may have involved one of the largest pterosaurs observed in the past century. From a careful examination of Gideon Koro’s testimony, it seems that the ropen that terrified him and his three friends, around 1994, had a wingspan over forty feet.
The “Perth Creature” seen by an Australian couple in 1997 may have had a wingspan as great as fifty feet. The minimum size that they thought it could have been was thirty feet in wingspan.
I believe the creature’s flight path was not exactly perpendicular to the road, when it flew over it, from the best of my memory of interviewing the eyewitness, which brings up the possibility that it may have been even longer than thirty feet. It’s hard to find room for much exaggeration in this sighting: The ropen seems to have been close to thirty feet long.
Sometimes an eyewitness will say “giant bat.” We need not assume the flying creature was literally a bat.